Charles baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire Rosemary Lloyd Charles Baudelaire Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the modern period Each book explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question and relates it to their major works In the same series Michel Foucault David Macey Noam Chomsky Wolfgang B Sperlich Jean Genet Stephen Barber Jorge Luis Borges Jason Wilson Pablo Picasso Mary Ann Caws Erik Satie Mary E Davis Franz Kafka Sander L Gilman Walter Benjamin Esther Leslie Guy Debord Andy Merrifield Jean Cocteau James S Williams Marcel Duchamp Caroline Cros Georges Bataille Stuart Kendall Frank Lloyd Wright Robert McCarter Ludwig Wittgenstein Edward Kanterian James Joyce Andrew Gibson Octavio Paz Nick Caistor Jean-Paul Sartre Andrew Leak Charles Baudelaire Rosemary Lloyd reaktion books For Sandy Hamrick Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 33 Great Sutton Street London ec1v 0dx, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2008 Copyright © Rosemary Lloyd 2008 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Lloyd, Rosemary Charles Baudelaire – (Critical lives) Baudelaire, Charles, 1821–1867 Poets, French – 19th century – Biography Art critics – France – Biography I Title 841.7 isbn–13: 978 86189 363 Contents Abbreviations Childhood and Youth Revolt 39 Second Empire Paris 79 The Results of the Trial 115 The Final Years 151 References 179 Further Reading 183 Acknowledgements 187 Photo Acknowledgements 189 Abbreviations oc Charles Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, ed Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler (Paris, 1975–6) c Charles Baudelaire, Correspondance, ed Claude Pichois (Paris, 1972) mop Charles Baudelaire/Thomas De Quincey, Un Mangeur d’opium, ed Michèle Stäuble (Neuchâtel, 1976) All translations are my own Childhood and Youth A small medallion offers the earliest known picture of Charles Baudelaire He is a collégien, poised between childhood and adolescence, at that eternal moment he was to describe some ten years later in a poem he sent to the poet, novelist and critic Sainte-Beuve: All beardless then, on that old oaken bench, More worn and polished than fetters on a chain, Buffed through the endless day by flesh of men, We sadly hauled our sorrows, cower’d and bent, Beneath that square of sky where we knew solitude, Where ten years long the child drinks study’s bitter brew (oc, i, p 206) His gaze is wary, slightly resentful, the mouth unsmiling In his first full-length article on his American alter ego, Edgar Allan Poe, Baudelaire would make the following claim: All those who have reflected on their own lives, who have often looked back to compare their past with their present, all those who have adopted the habit of exploring their own psychology with ease, know what an immense part adolescence plays in an individual’s ultimate originality It is then that objects leave their deep trace on the tender and uncomplicated mind It is then that colours are vivid and that sounds speak a mysterious Baudelaire as a schoolboy, 1830, medallion It is best to take our leave of him with Nadar’s photograph, from around 1855: leaning back in a handsome armchair, the high dome of his forehead still unlined, his left hand delicately placed against his cheek, he appears lost in a blend of creative reverie and a sceptical assessment of the contemporary world 176 References Childhood and Youth Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler, Baudelaire (Paris, 1987), p 112 Pichois and Ziegler, Baudelaire, p 118 On this see Graham Robb, La Poésie de Baudelaire et la poộsie franỗaise 18381852 (Paris, 1993) Claude Pichois, La Jeunesse de Baudelaire (Nashville, te, 1991), pp 19–20 Pichois, Jeunesse, p 50 Ibid Pichois and Ziegler, Baudelaire, p 626 Revolt Eugène Crépet, Charles Baudelaire (Paris, 1928), p 26 Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler, Baudelaire (Paris, 1987), p 158 Pichois and Ziegler, Baudelaire, p 162 Claude Pichois, La Jeunesse de Baudelaire (Nashville, te, 1991), p 92 Champfleury [Jules Husson], Souvenirs et portraits de jeunesse (Paris, 1872), p 135 Baudelaire et Asselineau, eds Jacques Crépet and Claude Pichois (Paris, 1953), pp 66–8 Pichois, La Jeunesse de Baudelaire, pp 23–4 A Privat d’Anglemont, Paris inconnu (Paris, 1861) pp 343–4 179 Pichois, La Jeunesse de Baudelaire, p 23 10 Pichois, La Jeunesse de Baudelaire, p 52 11 Quoted in A Tabarant, La Vie artistique au temps de Baudelaire (Paris, 1963), p 81 12 Baudelaire and Asselineau, pp 76–7 Second Empire Paris Théodore de Banville, Œuvres poétiques complètes, ed Peter Edwards (Geneva, 1992–2001), vol iii, p 51 Claude Pichois and Jacques Dupont, L’Atelier de Baudelaire (Paris, 2005), p 3070 Pichois and Dupont, L’Atelier, p 2687 Quoted in Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler, Baudelaire (Paris, 1987), p 301 Pichois and Dupont, L’Atelier, p 1849 The Results of the Trial Richard D E Burton, Baudelaire in 1859 (Cambridge, 1988), p 182 Sotheby’s catalogue, 100 Livres, Manuscrits, Documents & Objets littéraires de la collection Pierre Leroy, 27 June 2007, p 54 Maxime Du Camp, Les Chants Modernes (Paris, 1855), p Lettres Baudelaire, ed Claude Pichois (Neuchâtel, 1973), p 382 W T Bandy, and Claude Pichois, Baudelaire devant ses contemporains (Paris, 1967), pp 164–5 180 The Final Years W T Bandy and Claude Pichois, Baudelaire devant ses contemporains (Paris, 1967), pp 30–31 Bandy and Pichois, Baudelaire devant ses contemporains, p 31 Philibert Audibrand, Un Café de journalistes sous Napoléon iii (Paris, 1888) p 295 Charles Yriarte, Portraits cosmopolites (Paris, 1870), p 124 Yriarte, Portraits cosmopolites, p 120 Stéphane Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes, ed Bertrand Marchal (Paris, 2003), vol ii, p 282 181 Further Reading Editions The standard edition of Baudelaire’s complete works is the one published by Gallimard in its Pléiade series and edited by the great Baudelaire scholar Claude Pichois (Paris, 1975–6) Equally, the best source for the correspondence is Pichois’ edition for the same series (Paris, 1972), supplemented with Nouvelles Lettres de Baudelaire (Paris, 2000) and Lettres Baudelaire (Neuchâtel, 1973) For a valuable edition of Baudelaire’s translation of De Quincey in parallel with the English original, see Un Mangeur d’Opium, edited by Michèle Stäuble (Neuchâtel, 1976) A useful single volume edition of the works with a selection of letters is the Œuvres complètes, published by Editions Robert Laffont (Paris, 1980) Biographies The most detailed biography is that by Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler (Paris, 1987) of which Graham Robb has produced a shortened version in English: Baudelaire (London, 1987) Numerous other English biographies exist including Enid Starkie, Baudelaire (Harmondsworth, 1971); Alex de Jong, Baudelaire, Prince of Clouds: A Biography (New York, 1976); R L Williams, The Horror of Life (Chicago, il, 1980); F.W.J Hemmings, Baudelaire the Damned: A Biography (New York, 1982) and Joanna Richardson, Baudelaire (New York, 1994) Richard D E Burton’s Baudelaire in 1859: 183 A Study in the Sources of Poetic Creativity (Cambridge, 1988) is a detailed exploration of one year of the poet’s life For reflections of the young Baudelaire in the writing of the time see Claude Pichois, ed., La Jeunesse de Baudelaire vue par ses amis: lettres Eugène Crépet Textes retrouvés par Eric Dayre (Nashville, te, 1991) Translations For a comparative study of translations of Baudelaire’s poetry see my Baudelaire’s World (Ithaca, ny, 2002) Clive Scott, Translating Baudelaire (Exeter, 2000) offers a lively and individualistic view of the whole question Carol Clark and Robert Sykes have gathered various different translations in Baudelaire in English (Harmondsworth, 1997) Recent translations of Les Fleurs du mal include Richard Howard, Les Fleurs du mal (Boston, 1982); Walter Martin, The Complete Poems of Baudelaire (Manchester, 1997); James McGowan, The Flowers of Evil (Oxford, 1993); Francis Scarfe, The Complete Verse of Baudelaire (London, 1986); and Norman R Shapiro, Selected Poems from Les Fleurs du mal (Chicago, 1998) The prose poems have been translated by Edward Kaplan, The Parisian Prowler (Athens, ga, 1997); Francis Scarfe, Charles Baudelaire: The Poems in Prose (London, 1989) and myself, Baudelaire’s The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo (Oxford, 1991) For translations of Baudelaire’s so-called journals see Norman Cameron, Intimate Journals (New York, 1995) and Christopher Isherwood, Intimate Journals (Boston, 1957) Jonathan Mayne has translated the art criticism in two volumes: Art in Paris 1845–1862 (London, 1965) and The Painter of Modern Life (London, 1964) The artificial paradises have been translated most recently by Patricia Roseberry, Artificial Paradise (Harrogate, 1999) 184 The poetry For a lucid, brief exploration of Les Fleurs du mal see Alison Fairlie, Baudelaire: ‘Les Fleurs du mal’ (London, 1960) An excellent analysis of his poetic techniques can be found in Graham Chesters, Baudelaire and the Poetics of Craft (Cambridge, 1988) Fine recent studies of the prose poems are by Marie Maclean, Narrative as Performance: The Baudelairean Experience (London, 1988); Sonya Stephens, Baudelaire’s Prose Poems: The Practice and Politics of Irony (Oxford, 1999); Steve Murphy, Logiques du dernier Baudelaire: Lectures du ‘Spleen de Paris’ (Paris, 2003) and Maria C Scott, Baudelaire’s ‘Le Spleen de Paris’ (Aldershot, 2005) For the popularity of poetry at the time see Graham Robb, La Poộsie de Baudelaire et la poộsie franỗaise 1838–1852 (Paris, 1993) Art criticism For the background to Baudelaire’s art reviews see A Tabarant, La Vie artistique au temps de Baudelaire (Paris, 1963) and T J Clark, The Absolute Bourgeois Artists and Politics in France: 1848–1851 (London, 1973) James Hiddleston offers a fine general reading of the art criticism in Baudelaire and the Art of Memory (Oxford, 1999) as does Timothy Raser, A Poetics of Art Criticism: The Case of Baudelaire (Chapel Hill, nc, 1989) A very useful and copiously illustrated edition of the ‘Salon of 1846’ is that of David Kelley (Oxford, 1975) On the essays about laughter and caricature see Michèle Hannoosh, Baudelaire and Caricature: From the Comic to an Art of Modernity (University Park, pa, 1992) Various books reproduce the works that Baudelaire discusses in his art criticism and mentions in his poetry Among the best of these are Yann le Pichon and Claude Pichois, Le Musée retrouvé de Charles Baudelaire (Paris, 1992) and Jean-Paul Avice and Claude Pichois, Passion Baudelaire: L’ivresse des images (Paris, 2003) 185 The literary criticism On this see Margaret Gilman, Baudelaire the Critic (New York, 1943) and my Baudelaire’s Literary Criticism (Cambridge, 1981) Baudelaire and music The best recent study devoted to Baudelaire and Wagner is that of Margaret Miner, Resonant Gaps between Baudelaire and Wagner (Athens, ga, 1993) Baudelaire and the city Walter Benjamin’s inspired readings of Baudelaire as flâneur have been gathered together in The Writer of Modern Life, ed Michael W Jennings (Cambridge, ma, 2006) See also Ross Chamber’s Loiterature (Lincoln, ne, 1999) The catalogue for the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris’s exhibition Baudelaire/Paris (Paris, 1993) offers a superb collection of illustrations linking the poet and the city 186 Acknowledgements My debt to previous Baudelaire biographers and scholars will be evident Like all readers of Baudelaire I am immensely grateful to the late Claude Pichois, whose tireless devotion to Baudelaire I have long admired I am also particularly indebted to the work of the following: Lloyd James Austin, Alison Fairlie and Felix Leakey Among the many whose readings of Baudelaire have illuminated my own understanding, I would like to offer special thanks to Richard Burton, Ross Chambers, Michèle Hannoosh, Patrick Labarthe, Steve Murphy and Sonya Stephens 187 Photo Acknowledgements The author and publishers wish to express their thanks to the following sources of illustrative material and/or permission to reproduce it (some locations of artworks are also given below): Photos © Adoc-photos/Art Resource, ny: pp 80 (art318125), 117 (art305194), 149 (art307713; photo by Bayar and Bertall); photo Arnaudet/Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, ny: p 47 (art154825); photos Michèle Bellot/Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, ny: pp 43 (art166740), 110 (art166742); Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris: p 92, 173; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris: pp 96, 131; photos BridgemanGiraudon/Art Resource, ny: pp 120 (art28184), 131 (art69055), 163 (art26886); Château de Compiègne: p 47 (Inv c.60.004); Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Corte di Mamiano, Italy: p 143; photo C Jean/Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, ny: p 166 (art168380); photos Erich Lessing/Art Resource, ny: pp 31 (art58540), 49 (art93175), 71 (art64352), 73 (art119772), 129 (4644); courtesy The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana: pp 11, 81, 142; Mahmoud Khalil Museum, Cairo: p 71; Mary Evans Picture Library/The Image Works: p 122 (emep0117195), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: p 119 (Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1916, 16.39; photo © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, ny - art323132); Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris: p 163; Musée Carnavalet, Paris: p 157; Musée Fabre, Montpellier: p 73; Musée National du Palais de Versailles: p 49; Musée d’Orsay, Paris: pp 31 (rf 2257), 33 (Inv ph01968-74), 43 (rf 41644), 109 (top), 121 (pho1985-224), 175; Musée 189 du Louvre, Paris: pp 70 (Inv 3824), 110 (rf 41641), 114 (rf 41643), 129 (rf 25), 166; photos © Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, ny pp 109 (top) (166741), 114 (art166741), 121 (art157667); photos © Roger-Viollet/ The Image Works: pp (ervl1092301), 19 (ervl0375308), 45 (ervl6020010), 48 (ervl0618203), 96 (ervl1302704), 157 (ervl03755911), 173 (ervl0001807); photos Scala/Art Resource, ny: pp 70 (art62455), 143 (art150469); photos P Schmidt/Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, ny: pp 33 (art163520), 175 (art168378); Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest: p 120; photo Visual Arts Publishing Ltd/Art Resource, ny p 109 (foot) (art109997) 190 ... Abbreviations oc Charles Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, ed Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler (Paris, 1975–6) c Charles Baudelaire, Correspondance, ed Claude Pichois (Paris, 1972) mop Charles Baudelaire/ Thomas... Wiltshire British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Lloyd, Rosemary Charles Baudelaire – (Critical lives) Baudelaire, Charles, 1821–1867 Poets, French – 19th century – Biography Art critics... Fleurs du mal, Franỗois Baudelaire would have been 98 years old When the future poet was born, Franỗois Baudelaire already had a sixteen-year-old son by his first wife Charles s first seven years